CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE VENUS
CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.
Over-lifesized, standing on an integral oval plinth with her weight on her right leg, the left relaxed and bent at the knee with the heel raised, draped in a voluminous diaphanous himation, revealing the form of her body beneath including her breasts, navel and left leg, the excess drapery gathered around her right hip, falling down her right leg and amassed between her legs, the hem splayed over the top of her feet, her toes emerging from beneath, wearing platform sandals, the himation originally draped over her separately-made and now-missing left arm, the right arm and head also separately made and originally pinned into place, the mortises visible
65¼ in. (165.7 cm.) high

Provenance

with N. Koutoulakis, Paris and Geneva, 1965 or earlier.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 10-11 December 1984, lot 352.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, New York, 10 December 2004, lot 559.

Exhibited

Stanford, California, The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, 2005-2013.

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Lot Essay

This statue was perhaps originally a portrait of an individual in the guise of the goddess of love. This figure is a variation of the so-called Aphrodite Fréjus or Venus Genetrix. Based on a late 5th century B.C. Greek prototype, it was further popularized in the Julio-Claudian Period, as Julius Caesar and his successors sought to identify with the goddess as progenitor of their family. Claiming direct descent from the Venus and the Trojan hero Aeneas, Caesar built a temple to Venus Genetrix in his forum in Rome in 45 B.C. For a similar example see p. 27, no. 242 in Delivorrias, et al., "Aphrodite," LIMC.

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